Susan Horner’s Journeys, Journals and Gems: The Unpublished Travel Accounts of an Intellectual Woman in Italy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the unpublished travel diaries of Susan Horner, an author and scholar who has been neglected in contemporary research. Horner wrote two meticulously organized journals about her sojourns in Italy from 1847 to 1848 and 1861 to 1862. Her journals, currently housed in the British Institute of Florence, represent important examples of nineteenth-century scribal and material culture. Through an examination of both text and image, this essay analyses Horner's self-representation as an avid intellectual traveller and demonstrates the ways in which her manuscript journals display a remarkable scholarliness, analytical approach and concern for factual accuracy. Horner's presentation of an intellectual self is a discursive feature aimed at bolstering the author's credibility and underlining her authoritative knowledge of Italy. Horner's writings also indicate the interconnection between script and print mediums: her diaries enabled her to articulate and refine her intellectual views, and paved the way for the more public scholarly authority Horner later achieved in her published writing.